White House To Ask For Nuke Research

May 8, 2002

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration plans to ask Congress to expand long-term research into reducing the amount of nuclear waste produced by the U.S. nuclear energy and reduce the cost of disposal, the Energy Department said Tuesday.

Energy Undersecretary Robert Card said there is for now "a riveting focus'' on getting approval for a waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But he added, "We should be looking at science and technology that would reduce the cost.''

President Bush's decision in February to go ahead with the Yucca Mountain facility 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas was to face its first congressional test Wednesday. The House is expected to vote to override Nevada's veto of the president's decision.

The Senate will take up the matter this summer and is beginning the process with a series of committee hearings this month.

Anticipating congressional rejection of the veto, which would allow implementation of the Yucca Mountain disposal plan, Card said the department's focus for now is on getting a license application ready for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by 2004. Assuming the license is approved, the disposal facility is expected to open in 2010.

Card also said the administration will ask Congress for "tens of millions of dollars'' on broader long-term scientific research into ways to reduce the volume of nuclear waste including research into technologies such as transmutation and waste reprocessing.

"The administration is on record as being willing to reopen the reprocessing issue,'' Card told members of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an advisory panel created by Congress.

The United States remains opposed to reprocessing used nuclear fuel because of the risk of nonproliferation. Last year, Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force recommended continued research into reprocessing technology.

Transmutation is an emerging technology that reduces the number of long-lived isotopes in nuclear waste, but no one has yet to perfect it, and it is widely believed to be too expensive to pursue now. Reprocessing or transmutation would reduce the amount of waste, but not all of it, so a disposal site still would be needed, Card said.

He and other Energy Department officials expressed confidence that Yucca Mountain will be approved not only by Congress but by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must issue construction and operating licenses.

The DOE officials made clear in remarks to the advisory board Tuesday that they expected many of the remaining technical uncertainties, including the specific design of the Yucca facility, to remain flexible well into the licensing process and, in some cases, beyond that.

For example, final decisions have not been made whether to pursue a "hot'' design, in which wastes would be kept closer together, or a cooler design with wastes would more spread-out.

The advisory board has urged for some time adoption of a cooler design, arguing it would remove some uncertainties over the durability over thousands of years of the engineered waste package.

Card said Tuesday the department would keep both options open, although he favors a "hot'' design.

Addressing another contentious issue, Card said he is confident a system will be developed for transporting the wastes to Yucca Mountain that is satisfactory to the states through which the waste would pass. Opponents of the Nevada site have argued it is too risky and dangerous to have thousands of nuclear waste shipments crossing the country on highways and by rail.

DOE officials said the department leans heavily toward primarily rail transport, although completion of a final transportation plan is not expected until next year.

"We want to jump-start the transportation issue,'' Margaret Chu, the new director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, which oversees the nuclear waste disposal issue, told the advisory panel.

On the Net: Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board: http://www.nwtrb.gov/

Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: http://www.rw.doe.gov/homejava/homejava.htm
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